UNITED STATES
Except for an ill-advised trip to an expensive Spanish resort last summer, Michelle Obama has escaped much of the criticism that has been directed at her husband, keeping a relatively low-profile while primarily focusing on childhood obesity, military families and the arts.During her first two years in the White House, she was more Laura Bush rather than Hillary Clinton, but that has begun to change. Now, for conservative critics, it is open season on the first lady.
Obama’s admonishments on nutrition and advice on breastfeeding are examples of big government “nanny state” intrusion according to Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.); her eating habits are evidence of her hypocrisy, according to Rush Limbaugh; her athletic physique is something to be lampooned on Andrew Breitbart’s Big Government website, which posted a cartoon showing her as overweight and eating a plate full of hamburgers.
To date, the East Wing has managed to stay above the fray, not wanting to take part in a point-counterpoint kind of debate. But to one academic expert on first ladies, the attacks seem unusually pointed.
“There’s so much anger in the criticism surrounding Michelle Obama,” said Myra Gutin, a Rider University professor and author of a biography of Barbara Bush and a book on 20th century first ladies. “It seems almost personal to me.”
Republicans have a simple response: Obama is now fair game because she is playing an increasingly political role in her husband’s administration.
When Obama made a string of campaign stops for Democratic candidates during the 2010 campaign, Republicans generally refrained from any attacks. But many of them point to the first lady’s e-mail to supporters earlier this month announcing the news that Charlotte had been picked as the host city of the 2012 Democratic National Convention as an example of her slow movement onto political turf.
And they say her support for the government playing a bigger role in advancing better nutrition is inherently political. “If the first lady doesn’t want criticism, then she shouldn’t propose policy,” said Republican strategist Mark McKinnon.
“While no one disagrees with encouraging good health, against the backdrop of her husband’s demonstrably invasive and expanding government, the fear is that her encouragement will cross over to government fiat,” said Mary Matalin, a former aide to President George H.W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.
In contrast to Hillary Clinton, who was put in charge of her husband Bill Clinton’s health care initiative shortly after he became president, Obama’s role in health care policy has been minimal. Clinton, a former senator who is now secretary of state, was an entirely new model of a first lady and quickly became a target of what she called “the vast right wing conspiracy” before dialing back her public involvement in policy after health care crashed and burned.
Republican strategist John Feehery said conservatives may be seizing on the fact that Michelle Obama, like Hillary Clinton, is perceived to be more liberal than her husband. But he sees a difference between the current first lady and Clinton, who was perceived as a “real ideological threat.”
“Michelle Obama isn’t heading up a health care task force,” Feehery said, referring to Clinton. “Michelle Obama is talking about issues that are relatively important. I think she’s a fairly traditional first lady.”
In that sense she has resembled her predecessor, Laura Bush, who promoted literacy and woman’s issues in Afghanistan as first lady, and never attracted much controversy.
“The thought of attacking [Laura Bush] was just not in the mainstream,” said Anita McBride, who served as Bush’s chief of staff. “I can’t really say she took a pounding on anything like this. Sure, she had her missteps but you really didn’t see much criticism. I think people saw her as someone who softened the president.”
Obama, a Harvard Law School graduate, was as accomplished as Clinton when she became first lady, but from the beginning sought a relatively low profile in the White House.
Asked by POLITICO recently if it’s a first lady’s role to delve into policy issues, Obama said: “We talked about this when I first came in, and I think every first lady has the right to—or the privilege of determining what their agenda will be and every first lady’s agenda is as different as every first lady.”
In her case, she made childhood obesity her main focus, though recently she has also spent time publicizing the needs of military families. Her kitchen garden and warnings about the dangers of junk food seemed fairly benign – at least in the beginning. But as the first lady began to talk specifics and a more policy-oriented role, her critics saw an opening.
Last summer, when she talked about telling her kids that “dessert is not a right,” it became an instant headline. Former Gov. Sarah Palin took a swipe at the line on her reality show as she made s’mores with her daughter. “This is in honor of Michelle Obama, who said the other day we should not have dessert,” she said.
Around the same time, the first lady took heat for taking the private trip to Spain as unemployment plagued millions of Americans.
Some expected the attacks to continue when she hit the campaign trail to stump for Democrats in the midterm elections last fall. But her role in the campaign did not become an issue.
Julian Zelizer, a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University, said Obama “became an easier target” by becoming more political recently with the DNC announcement. “She made herself more political and thus fed these kinds of attacks,” he said.
Still, even the Charlotte comments were fairly innocuous.
“Vibrant, diverse and full of opportunity, the Queen City is home to innovative, hardworking folks with big hearts and open minds,” Obama wrote. “And of course, great barbecue.”
But some Republicans saw the move as political because as one Republican strategist put it, “a party convention is inherently political” and not something a first lady usually deals with.
As Obama marked the first anniversary of the Let’s Move! campaign and began to ramp up efforts for the second year, the scrutiny that had largely escaped her became intense.
When the White House served up deep dish pizza and bratwurst at its Super Bowl party earlier this month, Obama was asked why.
“It’s about balance,” she told reporters during a luncheon at the White House earlier this month to mark the first anniversary of Let’s Move! “It’s always been about balance.”
At the luncheon, the first lady briefly mentioned breastfeeding and how children who are nursed “longer have a lower tendency to be obese.”
“We also want to focus on the important touch points in a child’s life. And what we’re learning now is that early intervention is key,” she said.
Her comments received wide coverage. At the same time, the Internal Revenue Service announced that breast pumps could be tax deductable. And just like that, the story was on The Drudge Report.
The next day, Bachmann took the first swipe, criticizing Obama for trying to implement a “nanny state” based on her push to get mothers to breastfeed their children in order to help combat childhood obesity. Palin joined in two days later, taking a shot at the first lady while blaming her husband’s policies for the rising cost of commodities and items like milk.
“No wonder Michelle Obama is telling everybody, ‘You’d better breastfeed your baby,’” she said. In a column, Michelle Malkin also chimed in, saying that the first lady and her “food cops” aren’t “interested in slimming down kids’ waistlines but rather “boosting government and public union payrolls.”
Big Government then ran its cartoon portraying an overweight Obama eating a plate full of hamburgers and French fries. And this week, after the first lady indugled in spareribs with her daughters over the holiday weekend in Colorado, Limbaugh weighed in – like Breitbart – on her appearance.
“I’m trying to say that our first lady does not project the image of women that you might see on the cover of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue or of a woman Alex Rodriguez might date every six months or what have you,” Limbaugh said.
The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank wrote that Limbaugh was the right person to comment “being perhaps the finest example of the male form since Michelangelo sculpted David,” but the White House said nothing.
Not all Republicans think that attacking Obama is smart politics.
“Cheap shots against Michelle Obama are stupid,” Feehery said. “She’s a good first lady and I think that conservatives are better off keeping their focus on President Obama. There’s nothing I’ve seen from Michelle Obama that I’ve found offensive.”
And former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who has an interest in nutrition thanks to his own struggles with weight, was even more supportive.
“She’s been criticized…out of reflex rather than out of thoughtful expression,” he said Wednesday at a session with reporters in Washington. “It’s exactly what Republicans say they believe, which is you put an emphasis on personal responsibility…I thought that’s what we were about.”
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